Where do you find your inspiration?

For me, it's less a case of 'finding' and more a case of allowing. I need to make space for inspiration. I need to be in an open and receiving state. There needs to be a skace for the inspiration to get in.

Last year, I think that as a challenge. I was overwhelmed with personal issues and family illnesses, and I was as busy as always with my teaching business, and there was simply no room for inspiration. Occasionally it tried to sneak in through a crack, but there wasn't just enough light and oxygen to keep it alive.

The latter half of this year has felt more spacious and calm. I've also changed my environment. I'm now spending a lot of time in the Eden Valley, the lesser known neighbour to the Lake District. It is a magical place, a wide, peaceful valley surrounded by distant fells and laced with babbling streams that turn into torrents after rainfall. 

But most of all, it is a place of sky. The widest, most dramatic, most frequently changing sky I have ever seen. These skies are paintings in their own right. They draw me out on walks where I snap endless photographs on my phone. I talk to myself on these walks.

"wow look at that"

"oh my God!"

"Good grief!"

"That's incredible!"

Just this morning the clouds were tinged with a delicate pink that as so beautiful it made me gasp. I rushed back to the house to grab my phone, but in those 2 minutes, the sky had changed again and the moment was lost.

It's not just the physical beauty that grabs me. It's also the way these skies me me feel. I am quite literally awestruck. I am both removed from myself and more connected to myself than any other time. I forget all my little worries and petty grievances and feel somehow at one with everything around me.

And of course, once I am in a state of relaxed wonder, I am suddenly inspired to create. I am currently working in sketchbooks and getting ready to start exploring on large pieces of paper. 

I initially planned to abstract my feelings about the skies, but some of my studies look very "landscapey" and I am allowing them to be whatever they want to be. The sketches will lead the way rather than me trying to shape the sketches.

It's a lovely feeling and it made me want to ask you... are you leaving enough space for inspiration to strike? It's so easy to fill our time with work and family and even with creating work, but we need that empty space if we are to have new ideas.